Sal Perricone was still Sal Perricone on the Internet: Jarvis DeBerry

Posted August 7, 2014 at 6:40 PM

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Then-assistant U.S. attorneys Jan Mann, left, and Sal Perricone, right, talk with the media outside the federal courthouse in New Orleans after Mose Jefferson was convicted of four bribery charges August 21, 2009.
(Chris Granger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

A federal judge ruled last week that online comments from former federal prosecutor Sal Perricone had no effect on the jury that found Renee Gill Pratt guilty in a 2011 racketeering trial. Gill Pratt has remained free since that conviction, but U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle said in his July 30 ruling that she must report to prison by Sept. 2. Perricone was asked by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune to respond to Gill Pratt's claim that his comments were damaging, and it was somewhat surprising that he answered.

Then again, maybe it isn't surprising. It's clear that Perricone likes expressing his opinion. His inability to keep his opinions to himself ended his federal career, the federal careers of former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten and Letten's second-in-command. Even more significantly, Perricone's commenting prompted U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt to vacate the convictions of New Orleans police for the post-Katrina killing of pedestrians on Danziger Bridge and the alleged cover-up.

That's what gave Gill Pratt hope. She was hoping that Judge Lemelle would find that Perricone's online comments hurt her the same way Judge Engelhardt found that Perricone's online comments hurt the Danziger defendants. Among her claims was that Perricone's commentary was racially inflammatory. Judge Lemelle himself noted that after Gill Pratt's first trial ended in a hung jury that Perricone used an online alias to claim that any failure to vote guilty must have been made on "racial" grounds.

In an email to a reporter, Perricone wrote, "I am not a racist and never have been or will be. My anonymous comments, along with those made by others, were constitutionally made, consistent with that right enshrined in our jurisprudence."

I don't know that anybody has ever questioned Perricone's First Amendment right to speak his mind, and whether he or his comments are racist is irrelevant. He has been criticized - and rightly so - for talking out of order.

For example, jurors have constitutional rights, too, but if they got busted for discussing cases before them the way Perricone was doing online, it wouldn't help them any to tell a judge that their comments were "constitutionally made."

Perricone says he wasn't trying to influence any jurors. And he makes the absurd suggestion that the only people upset by his comments are those who have problems with the Constitution, "Those who eschew the First Amendment," he writes, "should find a jurisdiction where free speech is forbidden."

But Perricone's next sentence may be the one deserving of the most discussion. "None of my comments," he writes, "were made under the aegis of my office."

The Internet clearly gives people the opportunity to pretend to be something they're not and sometimes pretend to be somebody else. However if a professional has an obligation to watch what he says in public, he's fooling himself if he thinks that obligation ends when he logs into a social media account. Or when she makes up a phony name to make comments on a news website.

Anybody who has spent time on Twitter has likely seen other users claim that their opinions are their own and that they don't necessarily reflect the opinions of their employers. What they really seem to be asking is for permission to be offensive without it threatening their employment. They are asking us to separate their personal selves from their professional selves and believe that the opinions they express in their leisure are kept at bay when they're on the clock.

In March Ebony.com editor Jamilah Lemieux had a brief but well-publicized Twitter exchange with Raffi Williams, a press secretary for the Republican National Committee. When Williams asked if Lemieux wanted to know more about a new digital magazine for black conservatives, she wrote, "I 100% do not want to know more, I wish I knew less." When Williams took issue with that, Lemieux responded: "Oh, great, here comes a White dude telling me how to do this Black thing. Pass."

Williams - the son of Fox News contributor Juan Williams - isn't white. But even if he were, that wouldn't have made Lemieux's response appropriate. Ebony apologized, which only angered some of Lemieux's fans who thought the magazine should have stood up for her.

But Lemieux was contrite when she wrote soon after about "the evolving concept of being an employed individual on social media -- and the ever-shifting line between public and private."

Unlike Perricone, she understood: "This is not about the First Amendment ... In theory, I should be able to say whatever I want on my personal social media accounts and everyone should understand and respect that my words are not the words of Johnson Publishing Company, nor EBONY... That is not reality."